Defining the Job Roles of AEM Implementations
In any large digital experience platform implementation (and ESPECIALLY so with AEM), we are considerably past the point where a “webmaster” or jack-of-all-trades could be remotely expected to cover all of the required roles effectively. So, covered on our podcast episode here and then detailed (and hopefully regularly-updated) below are the primary roles of an AEM project, and what their responsibilities and strengths are. But also (and sometimes much-more-critically), whether this is a role one would generally keep in-house, or is one you’d typically contract for with an agency or solution provider.
Also available on Apple Podcasts and as an audio or video podcast on Spotify.
A quick summary of roles we take up in the podcast:
Product Owner / Site Owner
The product owner or site owner is the primary point of responsibility on an implementation’s content and functionality, generally either Director-level or VP-level at a company. For AEM sites, generally AEM is running the “.com” of that business. Out of all of the roles here, it’s the only one that is essentially never outsourced to a party outside of the company.
Taken up at 7:11 in the podcast
AEM Solution Architect (also Multi-Solution Architect)
[taken up at 9:45]
A solution architect is, by contrast with the product owner above, almost always from a vendor or agency. Their job is to understand thoroughly the set of problems, pain points, requirements, personnel, goals, budgets, desired abilities, and indicators of success for a given company, and to then design a solution which actually meets these and which can be executed. A solution architect for AEM is already typically an AEM Architect who also has experience in development, operations, and the related skills needed to design a whole solution that works.
A “multi-solution architect” ends up needing to be engaged when the problem being solved crosses over multiple discrete solutions, like “AEM and Adobe Experience Platform” or “Sitecore + SAP Commerce” or “AEM Assets + AEM Forms”.
As a note - solution architects are necessary for a good solution to get sold, but solutions tend to be shallow and poorly-thought-out when that solution architect ends up being a “technical salesman” instead of someone whose spent quality time with dirty hands, and has a number of successes (and failures) under their belt.
The Solution Architect, I’ve also found, needs to be able to wear the hat of “Sales Buffer” (discussed at 11:00) to be able to make sure that the right products are purchased at the right time, and not just because they sounded flashy or because the sales team from XYZ company said “AI” the correct number of times in a convincing sales pitch.
AEM Architect
The AEM Architect is probably one of the most difficult roles to accurately and consistently define, as the qualities a project or team needs in an “AEM Architect” are highly variable. [See 15:48] They need to be able to:
- Know AEM better than most anyone on the team
- Above all, they should know everything that AEM is capable of, and also they should know where to draw the line on what AEM is not capable of, or what it should not be made to do. The only way to get THAT is experience, and that experience probably shouldn’t all be “happy path” experience. They should have seen AEM go up in flames a few times.
- They should have soft skills for project management, personnel management, personnel debugging, and also be good as a “Sales Deflector” as well as sometimes being a “Sales Accelerator” when tools really NEED to be acquired for a team to be successful. [See 21:29]
AEM Front-End Developer & AEM Back-End Developer
Much easier to define, though we dive into whether the FE and the BE developer can be the same person, or whether it makes sense to split these roles out. [25:00]
AEM Forms Developer
“AEM Forms” is very much not the same as “forms done on AEM”, as absolutely confusing as that is. AEM Forms is an amazing product which is a separate SKU from AEM Sites, and is heavily leveraged by larger companies to thoroughly do real-deal digital transformation.
AEM Devops Engineer / Sysadmin
The job of doing system administration and operations on AEM - whether it’s AEM on-premise, or Adobe-managed 6.5 or AEM as a Cloud service - is something that ALWAYS requires somebody AEM-experienced working on it. Somebody always has to wear the hats of monitoring, reliability, maintenance, CI/CD, deployment, and performance - otherwise you get outages and a poor-performing website.
We’ve probably put more work than usual into discussing this particular role, from the war stories of doing system administration on AEM, to the discussions on whether or not self-hosted AEM is still a thing. It just cannot be stressed enough that even if any service says that they are “fully managed”, unless they are specifically managing YOUR SITE (which generally is not the case), you need to ensure this role is adequately held.
Full topics covered in this AEM Roles Discussion
- 0:00 - Intro & Audiences (recruiters & AEM site owners)
- 2:36 - Project managing a non-AEM site
- 3:24 - The Monoliths vs Composable discussion
- 4:45 - Is there a simple "should I in-house or outsource AEM personnel"?
- 7:11 - Role: defining the AEM Site Owner or Product Owner
- 9:45 - Role: defining the Solution Architect or AEM Solution Architect
- 11:00 - The Solution Architect as "Sales Buffer"
- 15:00 - Separating "planning" from "implementation projects
- 15:48 - Role: defining the AEM Architect
- 16:48 - Differentiating "lead developer" from "architect"
- 18:10 - The "soft skills" of an Architect
- 21:29 - The architect also wears the "Sales Deflector" hat
- 22:20 - On consulting architects & the ethical need to work yourself out of a job
- 23:47 - The architect as a "Sales Accelerator"
- 25:00 - Role: defining the AEM Developer (and front-end vs back-end)
- 29:05 - Role: AEM Forms Developer (and real-deal Digital Tranformation)
- 32:09 - Roles: AEM Assets Developer & Information Architect
- 33:31 - Role: AEM Quality Assurance (QA)
- 36:28 - Role: AEM Authors
- 39:45 - Role: AEM Devops / AEM system administrator
- 44:20 - The Maxim of Website Dashboarding
- 45:50 - The AEM devops role of ensuring the right tooling is purchased & used
- 46:45 - Does AEM system administration have to be AEM-experienced
- 48:55 - Do you have to have AEM ops in-house?
- 51:44 - Roles: Adobe Commerce, Hybris, Adobe Experience Platform, SEO
- 53:50 - Deciding on in-house or outsource?
Please give our podcast a listen, and reach out if you’d like to discuss how new infrastructure models like this might work for your environment! Please reach out!
Podcast Speakers
Tad Reeves
Principal Architect at Arbory Digital
Tad has been working with Adobe products since 2010 and has extensive experience in website infrastructure. Starting in 1996, he has worn nearly every hat in website delivery from solution architecture to product management, and has over two decades of experience. He loves that Arbory gives him the opportunity to provide honest and effective solutions, even if it means challenging prevailing sales perspectives. When Tad isn’t working, he enjoys mountain biking and exploring nature with his wife & 3 kids.
Hank Thobe
Director of Business Execution at Arbory Digital
Hank earned his AEM business practitioner certification in 2022, specializing in UI and workflows. Soon after, he took on a role as a contractor with Zaxby’s as a project manager for their DevOps team. In the past, he helped launch a tech startup called InstantOrder, which served mom-and-pop restaurants with online food ordering and kickstarted his motivation for innovation. Currently, Hank enjoys going to the beach, traveling, spending time in nature, and playing intramural sports.
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